Can pills cure grief?

“The grieving process gets close at what it means to be human; it’s understandable that handing it over to professionals armed with pills approaches the most dangerous misuse of pharmaceuticals we can imagine.

“Whereas depression is usually constant, grief is more likely to ebb and flow in waves and it does not usually invoke the feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem that are so characteristic of depression. Grievers long to be reunited with someone they loved; the depressed often believe that they are unlovable.”

Don’t despair too volubly, Jenny, or some clown might pop an anti-depressant into your gob…
Surely anyone who has experienced, or even anyone who knows someone with, clinicaldepression understands the difference between that and “ordinary” grief. NB difference between being depressed, and suffering from an illness- clinical depression. It seems we have to keep shouting the bleedin’ obvious as loudly as we can so in these nervy, easily-muddled times of ours, we can all side-step various sorts of nonsense.

Ok, I’m the first to admit that certain drugs can help people cope with certain effects of certain types of grief at certain times…but grief as an illness to be treated? Seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so daft in my life. Where did this ‘two months’ rubbish come from? The grief caused by a bereavement never goes away although it becomes less raw and debilitating over time. If, for the sake of medical whatever, we have to give an avaerage time that grief has a significant effect on someone’s day to day life I would say a… Read more »

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5 years ago

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Jonathan

We read in the piece linked here: “Now, psychiatrists will no longer be advised to wait two months after a patient loses a loved one, for the period of “normal” grief to pass, to diagnose mental illness — and prescribe antidepressants. Also: “As yet, the potential effects of treating grief in the same way we would depression have not been studied.” I’m no doctor, but I do have some past experience of mind-altering drugs, and in my work with Cruse bereavement support I’m constantly faced with the apparently undermining effects of anti-d’s on peole’s sense of reality. Their grief is… Read more »

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